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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/217558
Emotional Phenomenology: A New Puzzle
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Abstract
Emotions are taken by some authors as a kind of mental state epistemically akin to
perception. However, unlike perceptual phenomenology, which allows being treated
dogmatically, emotional phenomenology is puzzling in the following respect. When
you feel an emotion, you feel an urge to act, you feel, among other things, your
body’s action readiness. On the other hand, at least sometimes, you are aware that
an emotion by itself is not a sufficient reason to justify an evaluative judgment and/
or an action, not even prima facie. How can a single mental state, emotion, seem to
be dogmatic and hypothetic at the same time? It seems that emotions alone fall short
of the justifying role in which their guiding role would be grounded. If this is true,
then emotional experience cannot be epistemically akin to perception. Unless we
are willing to claim that emotions cause action blindly (i.e., not rationally), we need
an account of the distinctive epistemic role of emotional experience that renders its
guidance role rational. In this paper I outline this new problem and its consequences
for the metaphysics and epistemology of emotional experience. I also try to offer the
sketch of a plausible solution
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ÁLVAREZ GONZÁLEZ, Aarón. Emotional Phenomenology: A New Puzzle. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. 2023. ISSN 1568-7759. [consulted: 10 of August of 2026]. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/217558